[Caring with meaning: the spiritual care in healthcare from the professional´s perspective].

Objective: To treat whole patient, spiritual and religious dimension included, allows improve the quality humanization healthcare. The aim of this study was to know the point of professional view regarding to assess this dimensions in patients attended in regional hospital.
Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study, through an ad-hoc survey with 30 issues (Likert 0: strongly disagree with 4: strongly agree), to health professionals, conducted in April 2017. Necessary sample size: 238. The SPSS (v19.0) statistical analysis was used. We calculated the absolute frequency and percentage of answers with each question and we used Chi-Square to assess the association of the answers with sex and professional category and ANOVA for age.
Results: We recruited 302 participants. 95.5% of women stand out the importance of creating an environment to express their spiritual and/or religious dimension the patient, compared to 87.6% of men (p = 0.017). At an older age, professionals differentiated the concepts of spirituality and religiosity better and agreed that both dimensions affected the patient (differences between 5-8 years of average age). The doctors were more in agreement with the importance of spirituality, followed by nurses and less auxiliaries, with significant differences in 17 issues.
Conclusions: The professionals recognized the importance of taking care of the spiritual and/or religious dimension, with some differences between professional categories, sex and age. Training in these subjects would favor a more comprehensive and quality assistance.